2008 03 09

Facebook once again is in the middle of major flakiness right now: links to nowhere, spontaneous logouts. The best thing to do when something like this happens is to treat it as a sign that it’s a good time to take a break from Facebook for a little while. So I decided to write this blog post.

Given the high tensions on all sides, the ongoing troll infestation in the group, and examples in the election campaign of what certainly seem to be some Republican dirty tricks being played, it’s natural to wonder whether this is some kind of attack like those described in “How to Rig an Election”. Speaking as somebody who’s had a lot of software engineering and computer security experience, my initial answer is probably not.

2008 03 08

With aid of what they describe as “the kitchen sink,” the Clinton campaign came out tactically slightly ahead: somewhere between four and ten delegates out of the 370 in play. Kudos to them. Even so, yesterday’s results are almost exactly what the Obama campaign had projected a month ago, a likely +3 or +4 over projections in Texas balanced by a likely -2 or -3 in Ohio. The Obama campaign continues to have a huge cushion: 120 pledged delegates over their early-February projections. With less time for a Clinton turnaround, Obama’s strategic advantage has grown … guess they were prepared for the kitchen sink, or something like it.

The Clinton campaign’s potential role in the Obama-in-Somali-garb photo will call attention to the earlier “Obama is a Muslim” email from Clinton staffers, the series of racially charged attacks documented on the Clinton attacks Obama wiki and elsewhere, and the Clinton campaign’s earlier “playing along” with Drudge. At the same time, the “denounce and reject” standard she proposed in the debate will get continued attention thanks to McCain and Lieberman’s welcoming of virulently anti-Catholic anti-LGBT anti-New Orleans anti-Palestinian (and anti-so-much-more) John Hagee’s support. How many volunteers, staffers, supporters will the Clinton campaign “denounce”? How many contributions will they reject?

From a strategy perspective, the Clinton campaign in desperation threw everything they could into March 4. (You can only align with Drudge, Limbaugh, O’Reilly and McCain so many times before voters and superdelegates start to ask whether this is good for the party — and there aren’t a lot of other friendly foreign governments they can call on these days.) At the cost of substantially damaging their campaign as well as their individual reputations, they managed to claw their way to an inconsequential and Pyrrhic “victory”. Mathematically, they’re now very close to elimination. Not a good result for the Clintons at all.

So, while it’s not over and anything can happen, once all the hard work is done and the votes are counted, I predict that March 4 will be seen as the day that the voters in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont — and the grassroots volunteers for Obama all around the country and the world — virtually assured Barack Obama’s nomination as Democratic party’s candidate for President of the United States of America.

2008 03 05

A lot of people have written great posts on why they support Barack Obama and his campaign; so I’ll keep it quick, and link out to others who have taken the time to give more details and say things better.

A lot of people say “they’re no different on the issues”. I disagree. There are major differences on four issues I care about a lot: civil liberties, the war, immigration, and LGBT rights.

civil liberties: Obama’s good — not perfect, but better than any president we’ve ever had. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, supports garnishing wages and presumably other enforcement for her mandatory health insurance plan, wants to censor videogames, and did not object when her husband signed the CDA and COPA, expanded wiretapping, and approved warrantless searches. He supports net neutrality; she opposes it.

the war. He advocates a firm timeframe for withdrawal, and his opposition from day 1 will help restore American credibility; he also, in my opinon, has a more accurate analysis of the situation. I also think he’ll make future wars less likely (for example his willingness, unlike Hillary Clinton, to engage personally with “hostile” leaders); Chris Bowers discussed this well. She still won’t admit that she was wrong when she voted for the war; for that matter, neither she nor her husband has ever disavowed the sanctions policy that led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths and did nothing to prevent the war.

LGBT rights: while far from perfect (both candidates oppose gay marriage and support the military’s exemption from campus anti-discrimination policies), Barack Obama is distinctly better than Hillary Clinton. He supports a full repeal of the federal “Defense of Marriage Act”; and he supports an inclusive Employee Non-Discrimination Act. More here.

immigration: He’s marched on May 1; she opposes drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants. And this is as good a place as any to point out that she never spoke against her husband’s “welfare reform” policy.

There are some other important differences as well, but come on … isn’t this enough?

Of course it’s not just the issues. The Clinton campaign’s repeated racist speech is appalling, as is the voter-suppression lawsuit in Nevada and her decision to break the agreement with her opponents and campaign in Florida are classic Rovian — and Clintonian — maneuvers; I’m tired of politics like that. Obama’s ability to galvanize involvement from younger and first-time voters has a chance to rewrite the political map, starting with the 2008 election and building on it. His strategic and out-of-the-box thinking during the campaign (the use of social networks; his head speechwriter is a 24-year-old; actively going on Spanish-language radio after the Kennedy endorsement; going on The Billerico Project) has really impressed me. I think his ability to work across partisan divides, trans-partisan as well bi-partisanship, will help him be very effective at making progress on his platform.

Oh, and I like and respect his wife a lot better than I like her husband.

Ever since my first election, I’ve looked forward to being able to vote for a candidate who’s not a straight white male who’s got a real chance at becoming the President of the United States of America. And in November, I’ll have a chance to. How cool is that? But that’s not enough.

If Obama’s the Democratic nominee, I’ll also have a chance to vote for somebody who I think can really change the world.

PS: A few of the many other posts I read that had an influence on me: Matt McGinty’s letter to friends and family in the Facebook Obama discussion group, danah boyd, on the new/old media distinction; Jack Turner’s The Clintons , Black Folk, and America: A reckoning on Jack and Jill Politics; Michael Chabon’s The Phobocracy;Meteor Blades and DHinMi on Kos; the New York Times civil rights editorial; the many great analyses in the Women of Color and anti-racist blogospheres of Gloria Steinem’s “oppression olympics” piece in the New York Times; and endorsements from Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, and Maria Shriver.

2008 02 05

The Yes We Can/Sí Se Puede video’s already got at least a million hits on YouTube — 566,000 for the one I linked to here, a couple more instances with 285,000 and 140,000, and then a long tail curve …

How many people will watch it if we get it all over Facebook? I dunno, but it seems worth trying to find out. So after some consultation with a friend, late last night I put a message on the Obama discussion board with these suggestions:

Here’s how you can help:

1) post it (using the “posted items” link in your applications list on the left hand side). This way, it’ll be on your profile and in your feed.

2) tell your friends about it, and ask them to do the same

3) if you’re in any Obama groups on Facebook, please post these instructions in their discussion boards and wall.

4) if you’ve got a blog, blog about it

Thanks!

I also send a handful of PMs, including one to a 20-person “friend list”, and put it in the One Million Strong for Obama group. [In the process, I ran into a couple of people with complementary ideas — I’ll add those to the comments here.]

Within fifteen minutes, two people replied in the thread saying “done”. By the time I woke up this morning, there were ten replies in the two threads … as they say in election season, “early returns are promising”.

So please: take a moment to get involved and help!

2008 02 04

All the Democratic candidates have shown a willingness to discuss LBGTIQ issues, and there are some very clear litmus tests. The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy mandating discrimination against gays in the military and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) restricting marriage to heterosexual couples are great lenses for discovering the candidates’ views on LGB issues, and last fall’s craven decision by Democratic leadership (endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign) to advance a non-inclusive version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act [ENDA] has added an equally good one on the trans front. So it’s unusually clear where they stand — and there are some significant differences.